What's it like watching 1,200 toy cars zip around an inconceivably tangled kinetic sculpture, charging and whirring all at once? Like choreographed chaos. Like pure unadulterated joy, tinged with inescapable repetition. Like this.

What you're watching is a piece by artist Chris Burden called Metropolis II, in which every hour 100,000 cars pass through the city of wood block, tiles, Legos and Lincoln Logs. It's a follow up to Burden's Metropolis I, which was built on a similar concept but employed only 80 cars. Metropolis II is currently being constructed at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art.

The name seems to indicate that the message isn't so much "wheeeeeee cars!" as it is "we are all trapped in an urban dystopia of our own creation!" Which, fine. If it's one with this much vroom vroom, I'll take it. [NY Times via Engadget]